How Does the Bible Define Family?

In July of 2020, the Lord took Peyton and I on an incredible journey that transformed our view of family. “We discovered that our view of family at the time was far from the biblical model of family actually provided to us in Scripture, and that we had been completely immersed in a notion of family that set itself up largely in opposition to God’s design.” This may sound over the top, but the truths we encountered were so life changing for us and I want to share what we have learned (and are continuing to learn) about what the Bible has to say about family. We are not experts in any way, but have been tremendously blessed by some individuals & resources that have helped point us to God’s blueprint for family and we hope to be a resource for others willing to explore these ideas for themselves. One resource that helped reveal to us what the Bible says about family is a book written by Jeremy Pryor called Family Revision. I cannot emphasize enough how amazing this book is and strongly encourage any believer regardless of life stage to read it.

Over the next few months, I hope to share some ideas that will challenge you and help you shine a light on your current notion of family.

To start, I want to share a portion of Family Revision that helps to define God’s view for family:

“We all tend to assume we know what a family is. After all, everyone has decades of experience in the subject of family. We all have extensive experience in our families of origin. But what if we don’t know what a family is? What if we don’t know what a family was actually designed to be? What if we lost the blueprint for family and we’re building something else? What if each of us needs to decide what paradigm of family we believe is most consistent with what God lays out in Scripture? In order to answer the question of which philosophy of family is more biblical, we must turn to the Bible itself to discover God’s design for the family. After all, family was His idea. And if the Bible reveals to us God’s design for the family, all believers must start from that design. Once we begin to unpack the biblical blueprint for family, it will be clear to see that this design is totally incompatible with its modern, western counterpart. Perhaps the simplest way to summarize the Bible’s position on family is to say that the Bible—in both the Old and New Testaments—presents a redeemed form of the classical philosophy of family. 

Let’s go all the way back to Genesis 1. God creates the family—the first man and woman—in verses 26 and 27, and then gives this first family its original mission statement in verse 28 when he says, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” The first thing to notice is who makes the statement. If the purpose was dreamed up by the humans themselves, then an argument could be made that family was left undefined by God and perhaps it’s up to us to come up with its purpose. But this is not what happened. God spoke the purpose over the first family, and as the Creator of the family, he had the prerogative to define its purpose. And similar to marriage where we read, “What God has brought together, let no man separate,” whatever God establishes, humans lack the authority to change.

When I consider the mission given to the family and then look at the purpose imagined by modern western families, it’s easy to see where we’ve diverged from the blueprint. We tend to think of a family’s purpose as providing a nurturing environment. Our most common analogy for the family is the nest. Family is important as long as the chicks need protection during their long period of development, and the family begins to lose relevance once independence is achieved. In contrast to this analogy, the original mission indicates that the family is designed not only to be an environment, but also to do something. Consider the verbs embedded in the mission statement: multiply, be fruitful, fill, subdue and rule. Our culture has a great word for a group that comes together for the purpose of accomplishing something—we call that thing a team. Families are designed to function like a team as they grow in number (multiply), deepen in quality (are fruitful), expand (fill), create order (subdue) and lead (rule). That’s what God designed the family to do.

If you want a family full of love and happiness—one that stays together and looks out for one another—you need to pursue meaningful goals as a team. In the midst of this pursuit is where you learn the self-sacrifice that’s necessary as the foundation of a loving, nurturing environment. But how do we shift our thinking to begin considering family as a team?